


it's their names that matter

by lizzieraindrops



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 19:09:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6436774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizzieraindrops/pseuds/lizzieraindrops
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The trio finally take some time to sit down and talk about Beth.<br/>A oneshot originally posted for a prompt <a href="http://lizzieraindrops.tumblr.com/post/142111439124/so-what-do-you-think-sarah-andor-the-rest-of">on tumblr</a>:<br/><i>So what do you think Sarah and/or the rest of Clone Club does on Beth's birthday?</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	it's their names that matter

Sarah plunks a heavy glass bottle of hard liquor down on Felix’s coffee table.

“Shotglass or straight from the bottle?” she asks Cosima.

“Uh, thanks, but I’d rather have my wine,” Cosima says with an easy grin. She fetches her own bottle and a tall glass from the kitchen.

“Don’t look at me,” Alison tells Sarah’s quizzical eyebrow. “I’m not having anything stronger than seltzer.”

“Well, fine. More for me,” Sarah says, picking up the bottle herself and taking a swig.

“I guess it’s my fault we never got to do this for her, isn’t it,” she continues. “Nobody else knew, at the beginning. And I kept it that way.” She sits forward on the couch and hangs her elbows on her knees, the bottle dangling between them. “Well, better late than never. Right?”

“Not for Beth!” Cosima says with a laugh. She sits down on the couch next to Sarah and uncorks her bottle.  _Blup!_  A few droplets fly gold into the late afternoon light. “She was always early for everything. God, I drove her up the wall.”

“You do realize that you were an  _hour_  late today, even though you  _live_  here?” Sarah says.

“Yeah, yeah. I know,” Cosima says, swirling the garnet-colored liquid in her glass. She takes a measured sip and briefly closes her eyes in pleasure.

Alison stifles a small laugh into her pint of seltzer. “She’d get so mad when you’d do that.”

“Yeah,” Cosima says. Her face falls a little. It’s easy to forget the aches hiding behind that smile, especially when it lets Cosima herself forget. “Maybe I shouldn’t have egged her on so much.”

“Hey, hey, none of that,” Sarah says. “No more what-ifs. There’s too damn many of them, anyway.” She takes another pull from her bottle.

Cosima shakes her head to clear it, and waves her free hand in the air as if to banish the prowling guilt that is hungry enough to eat all three of them. “You’re right, you’re right.” From somewhere deep within herself, she dredges up a genuine smile and plasters it across her face, teeth bared with tenacious positivity. “Did I ever tell you how she gave me this tiny cactus as a housewarming gift? Out of nowhere. When I transferred to Minnesota. It was so random.”

“A cactus? You’re serious.” Sarah settles back against the couch.

“Yeah, first time we ever met face to face. ‘Hey there, I’m your clone, nice to meet you, have a cactus.’” Cosima laughs to herself. “I’ve still got it over there. Brought it with me,” she says, pointing to the window over Felix’s bed. A spherical, spineless cactus no bigger than a fist is sitting there on the sill in its little clay pot. “To this day I have no idea why.”

“Maybe she was more of an odd bird than I ever gave her credit for,” Sarah says, smiling slightly. “We’ve all got our quirks, haven’t we? To odd birds.” She holds her bottle up in the air between the three of them, and Cosima’s wineglass and Alison’s pint clink against it. They all drink.

“What about you, Alison?” Sarah asks. “What was it like, the first time you met her?”

“Um, well,” Alison says, going pink in the cheeks. “… It was awkward. I tried to pepper spray her. See, she didn’t  _tell_  me that we were identical before our first meeting. I suppose she thought I wouldn’t show if she did. And she was right.” She sips delicately at her seltzer.

“You  _what?_ ” Cosima says, eyes wide in fiendish delight. “You never told me that! Oh my god, did she kick your ass?”

Alison quakes with silent laughter. “Well, I did end up pinned against the car door, but she did say I gave her a run for her money. I’ve done a lot of self-defense training, you know.”

“Sound like you were more on the offense than the defense,” Sarah says wryly, as Cosima falls back against the couch laughing. Alison grins in embarrassment.

After Cosima’s laughter fades, a silence falls over them. Alison’s voice prods at it timidly.

“What about you, Sarah?”

“What about me, what?”

“The day you met her. You never talk about it. But you must think about it a lot. You’ve implied as much, anyway.”

Cosima nods somberly in agreement and lays a hand on Sarah’s shoulder. Sarah’s eyes are suddenly hooded, haunted. For just a moment, they might be Beth’s.

“Also…” Alison says in an even smaller voice. “I’d like to know. What it was like. Sometimes I still have trouble believing it.” She holds her glass of seltzer close in both hands and stares into her lap.

“Well,” Sarah says, sitting forward again. “Some days I hardly believe it myself, and I was there. One second I see a girl doing something weird on the train platform, taking off her shoes and her coat, and the next -” she breaks off, running a restless hand through her hair and only making it messier. Cosima rubs her thumb in little soothing circles on her shoulder.

“Did she look scared?” Alison whispers, watching Sarah.

Sarah stares at the floor and shakes her head. “She just looked… empty. Like there was nothing left of her inside. But also: full. Like she had this entire story held under her skin that she knew she’d never get to tell - and I could see it, just for a second. All over her face. My face. And then, she was gone.” Sarah wipes a hand across her eyes in frustration. “And I didn’t do anything, because I was just trying to figure out what the hell was going on. And she just walked away and onto the tracks.”

There are tears shining on Alison’s cheeks, now, too. She’s sitting very still in the armchair across from the others and trembling almost imperceptibly. Cosima gestures for her to come join the two of them on the couch, scooting over closer to Sarah so she can wrap an arm around her. Alison stands up carefully and obliges. She sits down next to Cosima, who throws her other arm over her shoulder and pulls all three of them back against the couch cushions with a soft  _flump_.

“Well,” Cosima says, sounding rather sniffly herself, “I wish she was still here. But we’re still here, in part thanks to her. And she’s the one who brought us together. I wish I could tell her how much that means to me. How important she was. Is.” She lifts her head and stares into space, like maybe she could see her that way.

“I never even touched her,” Sarah says hoarsely.

“She hugged me, once,” Alison whispers. “When I was scared about all of this.”

“If she were here right now, we’d probably squish her til she couldn’t breathe,” Cosima says, with a lopsided smile from trying to smile instead of cry. “Clone dogpile, right here. With Beth on the bottom of it getting a noogie. And probably plotting a way to murder us, and have the police department let her off the hook for it.” That gets a watery laugh from Alison and a low chuckle from Sarah.

“Sometimes I just… wonder,” Sarah says quietly. “I feel like I almost know her, but I never really even met her, you know?”

“Well, we’ll get together and do this every month until you feel like you do. How’s that sound?” Cosima says bracingly. “We have plenty of stories. We’ll invite Art, too, he’ll have even more.”

“She would have liked you, Sarah,” Alison says quietly. Then, in an even smaller voice, “You know, you remind me of her sometimes. A lot of the time, actually.”

Sarah huffs out a short laugh. “You’re not the first one to tell me that.”

Cosima sighs. “She made such an impression on so many of us. I’m just sad things led her to believe that didn’t matter. That she didn’t matter.”

“She did,” Alison whispered.

“She did,” Cosima agreed.

“She did,” Sarah concurred. “To Beth.”

“To Beth.”

“To Beth.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title from a passage in _A Wind in the Door_ by Madeleine L'Engle.
> 
> _"Progo!" Meg asked. "You memorized the names of all the stars - how many are there?"  
>  "How many? Great heavens, earthling, I haven't the faintest idea."  
> "But you said your last assignment was to memorize the names of all of them."  
> "I did. All the stars in all the galaxies. And that's a great many."  
> "But how many?"  
> "What difference does it make? I know their **names**. I don't know how many there are. It's their names that matter."_


End file.
